In praise of M/T joints

[Jerry Olexa]

Over the past several years, I have built 3 garden benches..I chose cedar as my wood and the projects included many dowel and mortise/tenon joints. Today, my task was to dismantle the last one..It had been out in the weather year round basically unprotected.
Most of it came apart easily with a few hammer taps etc..The wood had basically become wet and even crumbly.
Time for a new bench with better protection.
BUT, the good news: I could not dislodge the M/T joints even with severe hammer blows...Had to saw them off. Inside they were dry and like new lumber.
I've always liked M/T joints..This confirmed the strength and longevity of this joint when properly glued, installed.
My respect them continues but patience is required to do them.

[Wayne Lomman]

I agree. We even use mortise and tenon joints in steel for our high load mooring systems. We get a higher load rating than the same design welded together. I'll get a picture tomorrow and post it. Been meaning to for a while but forget every time I walk past the components in the shop. Cheers

[Warren Lake]

the Egyptians clearly knew a few things

[John TenEyck]

M&T joints are used for good reason; your bench offers further proof.

I was surprised when you said in the last line "but patience is required to do them". You aren't cutting them by hand are you? That's certainly a perfectly acceptable method, but they do require patience and your post suggested you don't enjoy the process. If that is true, build one of my horizontal router mortisers. It will change your life with regards to making mortises, integral tenons, and much more. Cutting mortises and tenons with it is fast, accurate, and safe, and the parts fit together correctly with no paring or handwork required. You will find cutting mortises and tenons to be no more difficult than any of the machine processes we take for granted like jointing, planing, ripping to width, etc.

You can build one of my machines from plans offered for free on my website for less than $100 and maybe 10 hours of your time. Everyone who has built one has said it was time and money well spent.

John

[Frank Drew]

Mortise and tenon is my preferred method of cabinet and furniture construction, but I never tried to turn out high volume, low margin work. I will say that I thought I'd died and gone to heaven when I got my horizontal slot mortiser.

[Jerry Olexa]

You guys are tempting me to look into horiz mortiser.....Another toy errrr tool....Oh well.

[John TenEyck]

You guys are tempting me to look into horiz mortiser.....Another toy errrr tool....Oh well.

Jerry, just give in to the temptation: https://sites.google.com/site/jteney...outer-mortiser

Seriously, about $100 and 10 hours of your time is nothing for the accuracy and speed a HRM will bring. There's no need to "look into" them. Just build the thing. And if you've been cutting them by hand your hands will thank you. Frustration gone, satisfaction high, and it won't tire you out; what's not to like? Set up once and you can cut a mortise in far less than a minute, and 1 or 1000 of them will all be identical.

John